As they await a major onslaught from the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Taliban are reported to be in turmoil with dissensions breaking out among the top ranks.
As Mullah Omar, the group’s living symbol and spiritual leader, stays safely hidden from Americans, big infighting has riven the top ranks on who will emerge as the working head in place of apprehended Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar to run Taliban’s day-to-day affairs.
The man at the centre of the storm, Newsweek magazine reported, was Mullah Gul Agha Akhund, an in-law and long-time confidant of Mullah Omar.
Akhund is brandishing a handwritten letter from Omar to claim to be the new second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban. But, his claim is being hotly contested by top military commanders of the outfit.
The magazine in its latest issue quoted Zabiullah, one of the group’s top commanders and spokesman, as saying that Taliban’s other top ranking leaders including its military chief Abdul Qayum Zakir were openly challenging Akhund’s claim.
The top commanders are accusing Akhund of being close to Pakistan’s ISI and saying that he is the pick of the agency not Mullah Omar’s choice.
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‘Thugs gave crash course to Shahzad’
New York : Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, arrested for the failed Times Square bombing, got a “crash course” in killing from thugs in Pakistan’s two top terror towns — Miran Shah and Mir Ali, according to a media report here.
Shahzad, the 30-year-old son of a retired Pakistani vice-marshal, had recently spent time in the towns most associated with Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies, a senior military officer in Islamabad told the New York Daily News.
The US has accused the Pakistani Taliban, which enjoys a near impunity in the lawless Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, of masterminding the May 1 Times Square failed bombing.
—PTI